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I’ve written about our coming Future in Review Conference briefly in an earlier issue of the Global Report, focusing on the biological aspects of pattern recognition and how they will inform tomorrow’s technology and wealth creation. (See “SNS: The Perfect Union: Biology and Computing,” June 25, 2015.)

While such self-reference no doubt smacks of advertising, we see it in just the opposite way: we work hard to build a correct view of the science and technology that will have the greatest inputs into the future, and of what that future will then be. We do this over time, with you as our primary community of interest. And the epitome of this work, outside of the Global Report, is FiRe.

So, when we discuss FiRe in SNS, there are two reasons:

First, we want to explain its design to this community, in scientific and technical terms, so that you see what we see in putting these people and ideas together. Why create a Pattern-Based Computer? What is it? How does it work? Is it really what’s coming? Who could and would build it? What does it do better than today’s computers, and how much better?

These are exactly the kinds of subjects we focus on at FiRe. Those who have been to FiRe already know: it has little in common with other tech conferences. Our goals, in this 13th year, are unchanged: to provide the most accurate look forward in technology and the most personally rewarding professional experience of the year.

Which brings up the second reason for discussing FiRe content in the Global Report: those who are deeply interested in the bias we bring to questions of technology and economic futures will want to learn more. Coming to FiRe is certainly one way to do this (and the best way), but reading about it comes in right behind participating.

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This week, I’ve picked a few key (non-biological) aspects to FiRe which I think stand out as long-term threads in SNS, and which are now breaking new ground.